


Sketches from Life in Republic City

by flyingwyvern



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Gen, Sketches, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-27
Updated: 2014-01-27
Packaged: 2018-01-10 05:43:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1155797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingwyvern/pseuds/flyingwyvern
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Night turns to day turns to night again, and Republic City roars and heaves and moans and sleeps and wakes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sketches from Life in Republic City

**Author's Note:**

> My favorite part of LoK has always been the glimpses of life in Republic City.

An elderly shopkeeper bows and scrapes and murmurs soothing words to the muscled thugs who blunder into his shop. He’s behind on his “insurance” money, and the Agni Kais don’t like that, but what’s he to do? His herbs don’t sell as well as they used to, and there’s a drought this year, and so on, and so on...One of the thugs grips his hand and purrs, “You could pay us in other coin, Teza. I hear there’s been a firebender lurking around here.” Teza denies it, they break his fingers -- only three this time, on his right hand -- and leave. Only then does his granddaughter crawl out of her hiding space in the floorboards by the cash register. She snaps her fingers to summon a flame, heats some water, and wraps his fingers for him with soothing, hot rags. It won’t be the last time. But he can’t let her go, he won’t, and she’s too young to defend him. For now.

A young waterbender walks home, her purse heavy from her pay as a private physician to a cigarette factory owner. Despite his age and decades-long smoking habit, daily healings have kept him healthy, hearty. The waterbender stops at her apartment to change into rougher clothing, then goes out to do what she considers her real work, the hours she spends at the free healing clinic on Catowl Street. She treats flu and croup and lung rot, heals bruises and broken bones caused by brawls and spouses alike, never condemning, only soothing. In the smokers who can’t afford daily healings, lung rot makes steady progress, cold and creeping, poisoning chi flows and twining around hearts; when she sees it her hands shake with rage. At the end of the night, the line still snakes around the block, but her shift is over, and the waterbender stumbles home.

An orphaned boy tries to find work, any work, but he’s mixed and penniless and so is his baby brother, and the guilds won’t take them. This is a city built from four nations, but even as the edges bleed and breed together the institutions stand firm, islands of pureblooded dignity. The orphan boy calls it vile, calls it snobbery and idiotic and unfair, calls it all sorts of names his baby brother is too young to understand. The orphan boy resigns himself, returns to the bone-crunching factory work that killed their parents, knows that soon it will kill him, too. The foreman greets him with a sad smile.

A group of metal-benders stumble out of the police academy at the end of the day, laughing, bone-tired and riding high on the tide of a good day’s work. It’s a thankless job; there are too few of them, the pay is wretched, their city spits at them with resentment. They are united, though, making the best of a job none of them ever wanted -- but then, it’s hard to get into a proper bending guild, when your eyes don’t match your face. Not one of them is pure Earth Kingdom.

A middle-aged man sweeps the street clean, his eyes on the setting sun as it brushes the cold asphalt with pink and purple and red. His bones ache; he can’t afford a healer, can barely afford to stay afloat, but he takes the time to take care of his little patch of the city. One of the neighbors appears on her doorstep, nodding to him as they watch the sunset. Beautiful, he thinks, looking at the sky, looking at her. Looking at his small block, full of towering apartments, full of families and hopes and dreams. Beautiful.

Day turns to night turns to day again, and Republic City roars and heaves and moans and sleeps and wakes.


End file.
